SEA STORY: It’s Official: The U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship Is a Complete Failure.

When the Navy in the 1990s first began shaping the LCS program, the idea was for the ships to be small, fast, inexpensive and lightly-manned “trucks” into which the sailing branch could plug a wide array of “modules” carrying equipment for specific missions including surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare and minesweeping.

In a bid to speed up the production of as many as 55 LCSs, the Navy selected two shipyards — Lockheed Martin’s facility in Wisconsin and an Austal yard in Alabama — each to build their own variant of the class. Complications and cost compounded.

“The Littoral Combat Ship program has been unnecessarily complicated from the beginning,” the Project on Government Oversight explained in 2016. “Initially the Navy aimed for each ship to cost $220 million, but the Government Accountability Office estimates procurement costs for the first 32 ships is currently about $21 billion, or about $655 million per ship—nearly triple what they were supposed to cost.”

It took the Navy nearly two decades to realize the LCS program had failed.

What a waste.

HYPOCRISY: Ex-CIA Officials Fume About Declassification Order, Ignoring Previous Leaks Of Secret Sources And Methods.

ATTEMPTED COUP: “The actions taken by the Obama Administration threatened not just Donald Trump and his presidency but the very processes and protocols by which the peaceful transition of power has been effected in the United States.”

TURNABOUT:

LEFTIES PROTECT THEIR OWN: The NYT is very gentle with Naomi Wolf — the “prominent author” who was humiliated in an on-air interview.

LIFE… FINDS A WAY: Baby Anacondas Born At New England Aquarium — Without Any Male Snakes Involved.

YES, BLOGGING WAS LIGHT OVER THE WEEKEND: I was at Stanford Law talking about social media and free speech. Say, did I mention I’ve got a book coming out tomorrow?

L to R: John Samples, Cato; Mary Anne Franks, Miami Law; Me; Harmeet Dhillon, Dhillon Law, Daphne Keller, Stanford.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Environmental Group Behind California’s Paper Receipt Crackdown Is Chaired by CEO of Digital Payment Company.

YOU DON’T TUG ON SUPERWOMAN’S CAPE: Rex Murphy: Campus social-justice Maoists dared to come for Camille Paglia. Big mistake. “The answer to this cloddish, arrogant, self-righteous, ideological twaddle — the lexicon of social-justice hollow-heads everywhere — is: ‘Just who do you think you are?'”

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Gillette Releases Its First Trans Commercial: A Proud Father Helps His Daughter Shave Her Beard. This will win ad awards, but it won’t sell any razors. Which is okay, because Gillette is just one of many institutions run by people who care more about the approval of their peers than about doing their actual jobs.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “If you want to thank a soldier, be the kind of American worth fighting for.”

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: CBS’s Scott Pelley Blasts Former Boss David Rhodes for ‘Hostile Work Environment.’

Flashback: CBS’s Scott Pelley Loses a Fight Rigged in his Favor.

HMM: The Next Citizens United? Freedom Foundation Fights Back After Dems Weaponize Campaign Finance Law.

ONE OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER:

Germany resists islamophobia. German law seeks to purge the public domain of such offensive views.

Germany also resists anti-semitism. The German government’s anti-semitism commissioner has warned Jews to avoid being Jewish in public.

The BBC sees the German far right behind the rise in anti-semitism that prompted the commissioner’s advice. Is it just me or are they ignoring a rival explanation?

Also, is it just me, or is the German method for resisting anti-semitism rather different from the German method for resisting islamophobia – so different, in fact, that their advice to Jews resembles what their law demands of ‘islamophobes’: become invisible in the public domain lest you cause offence?

Offend away, I say.

HMM: New state abortion laws threatening Roe v. Wade framework could ruin 2020 for Democrats.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY:  To Dashiell Hammett, born this day in 1894.